Business

Test Your Business Model Against These 10 Elements

You can’t succeed in business without an operational model that delivers value to customers at a reasonable price, with an underlying cost that allows you to make a profit. There are no “overrides” – for example, businesses don’t thrive just because they offer the latest technology, or because everyone wants to be “green, or because their goal is to reduce world hunger. I expect that should seem intuitive to all entrepreneurs, but every investor I know has many stories about startup funding requests with major business model elements missing. The most common failures are solutions looking for a problem, lack of a defined market, and giving away the product

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Business

Successful Startups Often Come With a High Price

Most entrepreneurs expect to face the “normal” challenges of starting a business, which include finding the right opportunity, building and executing a winning plan, and financing their venture. But many forget the pitfalls associated with traditional business jobs which can apply even to the smartest and most dedicated people running their own business. Often these facets of entrepreneurship don’t rear their ugly head until well down the road. Yet before you start, you should think about what the impact might be on your psyche, and how to neutralize these challenges in your own plan.

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Business

Smart Entrepreneurs Plan Multiple Rollout Iterations

The traditional mode of starting a company is to plan a serial process, where you complete only once all the steps, leading to the “big bang” launch of the company. I strongly recommend a dramatic departure from this model, called “planned iteration,” where you assume you won’t get it right the first time. This idea was well articulated by Paul Graham in an old essay, called “Startups in 13 Sentences” in which he talked about “making a few people really happy rather than making a lot of people semi-happy.” One of his key points is that “launching teaches you what you should have been building,” and I agree. All you old software development types will recognize the analogy to the traditional two year “waterfall model” of software development, which has been totally replaced with the Agile iterative methodology

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Business

How to Show Your Customers a Little Extra Love

I deal often with early-stage startups, and many of these don’t have any customers yet (but wish they did), so it’s not surprising they still don’t think of customers as their friends. More disturbingly, others do have customers, but the customer service program consists of an informal focus on “problems,” rather than a proactive effort to establish a positive relationship with friends. The right time to put a formal customer service program in place, with measurements, is before the first sale of your product or service to a customer. You can’t manage what you don’t measure, and customer satisfaction these days is one the most critical success factors to every business.

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Business

Six Reasons Why Startup Prototypes Attract Investors

It’s a long way from an entrepreneur’s “idea” to a working product with a real market and paying customers. A necessary intermediate step for proof of concept, credibility with potential investors, and communication with your team, is a working prototype. Building a prototype should be an early and high priority task for every startup. A prototype doesn’t need to look great, or be built to scale, but it better accurately translate your vision into something real and tangible

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Business

How to Succeed in Living the Entrepreneur Lifestyle

As we recover from some tough economic times, more and more people seem to be turning to entrepreneurship as an alternative to traditional employment. I applaud this trend, but caution all of you thinking this direction to approach entrepreneurship with your eyes wide open. It is not for everyone, as the entrepreneur’s path is fraught with challenges

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Business United States

US keeps Thailand in piracy list, but focus on China

Although some U.S. rights holders report good cooperation with Thai enforcement authorities, including the Royal Thai Police and Royal Thai Customs, Thailand remains on the Priority Watch List in 2012. The United States is encouraged that Thailand’s new government has affirmed its commitment to improving IPR protection and enforcement. But still more needs to be done to see Thailand removed frome the list.

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